letter from the editors

The sentiments in “Tierra Sagrada”—ternura, grief, pride, love, and fury—not only speak to the legacies of white settler colonialism and expose its contemporary operations, but also offer us imaginative and material practices/poetics for refusing and undoing colonial violence. Indeed, the artists, activists, and scholars published here remind us that defending and protecting the sacredness of land is our unifying struggle.

Collectively, the contributors to this edition ask their readers, viewers, and listeners—individuals who are differentially positioned as settlers, arrivants, indigenous migrants, etc.—to consider an array of questions, including: How do we meaningfully contend with the profound colonial erasure of indigeneity and indigenous knowledges, while also recognizing and sustaining their enduring presence in our lives and worlds? What are our responsibilities in recovering ancestral memory? In other words, what comes after remembering? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we honor centuries-long indigenous struggles of refusal, resistance, and resurgence as we enact present and future possibilities for our world?

As we labor to attend to these questions and continue the self-interrogation that it requires, the bozalta collective is also reminded of our own positioning; we gather and write on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabrieliño/Tongva People. It is our intention that “Tierra Sagrada” honor the past, present, and future of this land and People.